Uganda

Arua (Uganda) (AFP) The number of South Sudanese who have fled to Uganda has hit one million, the UN said Thursday, with no end in sight to the war behind the world’s fastest-growing refugee crisis. The nearly four-year civil war has pushed an average of 1,800 South Sudanese into neighbouring Uganda every day for the past year, many of them women and children fleeing “barbaric violence”, according to the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR). Another one million have sought refuge elsewhere in the region, but it is Uganda — one ofRead More

Kampala (AFP) For the last decade Ugandans have known two presidents: Yoweri Museveni, the country’s long-time ruler, and musician Robert Kyagulanyi a.k.a. Bobi Wine, a.k.a. His Excellency the Ghetto President. But in a surprising turn the 35-year-old reggae star — who was just three when Museveni took power at the head of a rebel army — on Thursday won a landslide victory in a city by-election to become the country’s newest lawmaker. Wine is a spectacularly popular Ugandan entertainer. For many, he embodies the struggles, frustrations and hopes of theRead More

Kampala (AFP) For the last decade Ugandans have known two presidents: Yoweri Museveni, the country’s long-time ruler, and musician Robert Kyagulanyi a.k.a. Bobi Wine, a.k.a. His Excellency the Ghetto President. But in a surprising turn the 35-year-old reggae star — who was just three when Museveni took power at the head of a rebel army — on Thursday won a landslide victory in a city by-election to become the country’s newest lawmaker. Wine is a spectacularly popular Ugandan entertainer. For many, he embodies the struggles, frustrations and hopes of theRead More

Kampala (AFP) The international community pledged $358 million at a fundraising summit Friday to help Uganda tackle the world’s fastest growing refugee crisis, falling well short of expectations. Organisers had hoped the meeting in the central city of Entebbe would raise at least $2 billion (1.8 billion euros) to help nearly a million South Sudanese fleeing civil war. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the pledges were a good beginning, but that more was needed. “I think it is a very good start but we cannot stop,” he said. However,Read More

Arua (Uganda) (AFP) The EU pledged 85 million euros ($95 million) to Uganda on Thursday as UN chief Antonio Guterres urged donors to give 20 times that amount to help the country deal with nearly one million refugees from South Sudan. Guterres visited a refugee camp in Uganda’s remote north where he met with South Sudanese who fled civil war in their country, a day before a summit in Kampala aimed at raising at least $2 billion to deal with the world’s fastest growing refugee crisis. “In a world inRead More

Kampala (AFP) A prominent Ugandan academic charged with cyber harassment for calling President Yoweri Museveni a “pair of buttocks” is back on social media with more colourful criticism of the country’s leader. Less than a week after being freed on bail feminist academic Stella Nyanzi was back on Facebook comparing Museveni’s government to an infestation of “pubic lice” and promising to continue “poking the leopards’ anuses”, a reference to a warning Museveni himself had issued to opponents in the run-up to the last elections. “I am now a fugitive inRead More

Kampala (AFP) Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Tuesday said the use of torture was “wrong” but faced criticism from a top rights monitor for not demanding an enquiry on alleged police excesses. “The use of torture is unnecessary and wrong and must not be used again if it was being used as I see some groups claiming in the media,” Museveni wrote in a letter to police and intelligence chiefs. He expressed concern that security operatives “may torture the wrong person, somebody who is totally innocent,” adding: “This is veryRead More

Kampala (AFP) Thirteen men accused of involvement in the murder of high-ranking police officer Andrew Kaweesi and two aides appeared in court Friday, with some claiming they had been tortured while in detention. Some of the suspects were limping heavily as they arrived at the magistrates’ court in the capital Kampala, and proceeded to display injuries they said were the result of police torture. Ahmad Senfuka Shaban, 30, a school teacher in Mukono, removed his shirt to show what appeared to be fresh injuries to his back, chest and leftRead More

Yumbe (Uganda) (AFP) Ugandan motorbike taxi driver Sadiq Agotre grumbles as he waits for a rare client among thousands of South Sudanese refugees hoping to receive food rations in the outskirts of his town. “Business is not good. These people don’t have money,” he says, gazing out over a vast area that in only eight months has transformed from scrubland and trees to the world’s biggest refugee settlement, Bidibidi, which houses more than 270,000 people. Uganda has been praised for its warm welcome of refugees, but as civil war inRead More

Entebbe (Uganda) (AFP) Targeted killings of specific ethnic groups in South Sudan’s civil war amount to “genocide”, according to Britain’s International Development Minister Priti Patel. “It’s tribal, it’s absolutely tribal, so on that basis it’s genocide,” Patel told reporters in Uganda on Wednesday, according to a ministry press officer travelling with her. Patel was returning from a visit to South Sudan where people have “experienced trauma and horror none of us can comprehend”, she told AFP in a separate interview. Civil war erupted in South Sudan in 2013 after aRead More

Picture of the day

Arua (Uganda) (AFP) The number of South Sudanese who have fled to Uganda has hit one million, the UN said Thursday, with no end in sight to the war behind the world’s fastest-growing refugee crisis. The nearly four-year civil war